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School board approves financial commitment to get district A+ certified

The Kearney School Board has committed to spending $72,000 to $135,000 in the next few years to take steps necessary for state A+ certification.

The Kearney R-1 Board of Education unanimously voted in favor of that at its Oct. 15 meeting.

Sharon Miller, science chair at Kearney High School, gave board members a report on what is needed to achieve the A+ status from the state. Miller and a group of teachers and counselors have been researching how to implement the program in Kearney and asked for the board’s support at the Sept. 17 meeting.

Miller said $72,000 would be the minimum financial investment for the school district. That would be the cost for a full-time A+ coordinator, including salary and benefits based on administration estimates.

Miller listed the requirements for A+ certification along with what the district currently does and what it needs to do to meet those requirements. Among the requirements is curriculum alignment.

“This is the big one,” Miller said. “For this we could either spend no money and use PowerSchool … or we could spend big money possibly with the Tapestry program.”

She said the district’s current PowerSchool software already does this, but adding new software — Tapestry — at a cost of $44,280 the first year and licensing fees each year would enhance that and save teachers time.

Steve McDonald, board member, has been researching the A+ program and said he’s not ready to commit to a new software program, yet.

“I don’t think anybody has found the magic bullet for software,” McDonald said.

Superintendent Dr. Bill Nicely said the program requirements are subjective.

“There is no perfect answer out there,” Nicely said. “There are some that work and some that work well.”

Miller said the district doesn’t have to start tracking curriculum objectives with the software until the district is designated A+ certified, which would likely be the 2011-2012 year.

“We have time to get this right,” McDonald said.

There are 11 program requirements that include career preparation, intervention of at-risk students, maintain seven years of historical data, evaluate the A+ program yearly and “rigorous” coursework among others.

The A+ program is a set of standards for students to accomplish, as facilitated by the school district. The goals of the program — through various standards and criteria — are that the students graduate high school, complete a selection of studies that is challenging and proceed from graduation to post-secondary education or high-wage jobs with workplace skills development opportunity.

When the students accomplish the goals, they are eligible for benefits after high school such as two years of paid tuition to any community college in Missouri, scholarships at many career or technical schools and four-year universities.

in other school board business

- Assistant Superintendent of Finance Randy Smith reported the district had a clean audit.

- Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Peggy Jacoby gave a report on the Missouri Assessment Program and adequate yearly progress scores. She noted Kearney students gradually get better at assessments throughout the years.

- The board appointed Nicely and board President Brian Thomas to the city’s tax-increment-financing commission.

Kearney Editor Kevin M. Smith can be reached at 628-6010 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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